86 Responses to “We changed the ending of Frozen Synapse”

I am a Bioware fan who like most people, noticed that there are glaring plot holes in the ending and that it betrays the established canon of the first two games. I and many others have chosen to voice these flaws to Bioware.

Other people are upset that what was promised was not delivered by an ending that is the same with very subtle changes.

I Believe that I should only voice my concerns and then it is up to Bioware to decide what to do.

To put it in an analogy
“Mass Effect is Biowares baby and I would never think about telling them how to raise their baby. Yet, they might want to get that wart looked at.”

I wish to Cooperate instead of oppose and I feel your statements on the issue have overlooked people like me. SOme may feel insulted by this but I remain composed.

We’re not all raging and we’re not all forcing Bioware into changing. The impression that all we want is a fantastical and happy ending that conforms to our selfish wants is false. This impression is overshadowing actual concerns for the community and it causes us to make rash decisions out of fear of being ignored.

Way to be a jerk to all the Mass Effect fans out here. Was anyone asking you to make a new ending for -your- game? Was the ending of your game so out of left field that it left your fans confused and disappointed with your work? No, I didn’t think so.

Pony joke… Do you put yourself on par with Blizzard and Ghost Crawler? Did you promise a pony to someone? Oh hey it’s just because you wanted to have a troll face in your tolling video… Check. Good troll. /golfclap

I was following your studio with interest, and bought two copies of Frozen Synapse. You’ve misrepresented and insulted me as a customer. I will never buy a game from Mode 7 again – and what’s worse, this was a totally pointless excercise. No one played your game for the story and thus the narrative was absolutely unimportant.

I’m a developer in the industry and I have to say that I would never want to work with you or your ilk. You have proven to have no respect for your customers(free or not) and would sooner alienate a large disenfranchised group than try to understand them. I will never hire any of you.

I for one enjoy this new ending. Originally i was disappointed to find no ponies and dinosaurs were present in the ending sequence, even though they were alluded to several times during development. I was so disappointed i was considering boycotting future mode7 games in protest.

The new ending with ponies and dinosaurs adds a whole new dimension to the game and sets new ground to expand the frozen synapse universe. Really, i can’t wait to see what is going to happen next.

Wilson
The narrative of Frozen Synapse was not a selling point, nor a focus of praise from the greater critical sphere which makes the analogy that Mode7 is attempting to draw illogical and misleading. The story of Frozen Synapse exists only in the periphery of the gameplay, uninfluenced by user action and easily ignored at little detriment to the overall experience.

Mode7 is ill informed or worse, purposefully creating acrimony by denigrating a segment of the gaming public in their effort to participate in the debate over the Mass Effect 3 controversy. This is forgivable as being ignorant is hardly a malicious act.

The question in play, and the source of much of the looming backlash, is whether Frozen Synapse is the place to broadcast such an opinion. Using their game as a social platform to broadcast a potentially divisive opinion through an update is a far more controversial precedent (in my opinion) than a studio acquiescing to fan objections over an ending lacking closure for a game.

Funny and actually interesting response. The internet allows the minority to create the illusion of the masses. I was disappointed in the ending of course but life goes on. I am sure you did this for publicity but it did work in your favor because now i am checking out your game and it will probably result in a sale.

Wow how childish. I’m so glad to see all these grown men and women taking Mass Effect just so seriously. Clearly a video game is totally worth insulting customers and fans of another series. Good job Mode7.

Guess you can count me in with the other people since I wont be buying any more Mode7 games.

From every thing I’ve read it’s not really them taking a jab at the people upset over the ending of Mass Effect 3 it seems more like they just wanted to know how it felt to change the ending to their game in response to suggestions and the thoughts from those who have played the game.

And the only reason they are actually putting the ending in to the game, and letting us, the people who play the game, see it is that it’s the only way for it to actually count(for lack of a better way of putting it).

I think you really have misread why people are upset. I think game is an art form, I respect the hardwork and effort that goes into developing any game or project.

However, when you market a product with the lead producers and writers stating multiple times in the public media that there will not be an ABC (RGB) ending and there will be wildly divergent endings available to all players. Quite simply it is false advertising and is a serious affront to trust consumers place in game designers in their vision.

To mock the people who play and ultimately are the reason games exist is quite saddening. What will happen when developers and the reviews stop caring about what the players think and develop games free of any notion of a player on the other end and that they are just blank slates that the artist is free to scrawl over without any interaction. In our profession this type of activity is toxic and is the direct cause of a number of failures in the real world where the context of the situation is ignored.

I hope you understand that you have your rights to express yourself freely but everyone else including your clients and consumers have that right as well. You don’t need to listen to them and they don’t need to listen to you.

In the end it would all work better if there was a trust and dialog between the groups so that they can come to an understanding and when things are promised they will be delivered regardless of the initial state of a game.

Also using a game as a vehicle for your personal opinion about games being changed due to opinions is circular. But there is hope you can still change it for the better (:

I’m interested in the range of responses to this, from pure delight to flailing rage. in terms of harming the game as a whole, I strongly believe that if you hit this ending unawares, it would be an amazing experience in its own right. However, the original integrity of the game is being preserved, with it reverting to its original ending shortly.

I’m not criticising or denigrating anyone by doing this. It’s a benign action intended to amuse and provoke debate.

This is childish and insulting to consumers. Furthermore, it calls intelligence into serious question if you would voluntarily shove your game into the middle of a consumer backlash with elitist jabs, as if you couldn’t be bothered with the opinions of mere customers. Great job on this one.

Am I the only one who doesn’t get what all the fuss is about, because I didn’t watch the video, because I haven’t finished the FS campaign yet, and because I haven’t played any of Bioware’s games, nor do I know what Mass Effect is?

I think it is clear that you don’t understand WHY ME3’s ending is “bad”. It isn’t an issue of outcome. It is an issue of QUALITY.

BioWare lost their lead writer for Mass Effect. On top of that, the project ran way long and they were forced to wrap things up quickly. One of the things the developers put on the chopping block was the ending. It got a complete last-minute rewrite with a minimal complement of writers (allegedly, two) and was put on a massively shoestring budget, and it showed.

The main hero character went completely passive. They actually used a God in the Machine ending. The character dialog choices were removed. Massive plot holes. Massively reused video with little distinction between the choices. Massively violated the theme of “choices and consequences” in the game.

Not only did the ending completely fail on the writing, but it was cut extremely short. It was not a Mass Effect ending. They ended up violating the artistic integrity of the title.

Fans called out BioWare on compromising the artistic integrity of the series. (Not to mention just plain producing a poor work.) BioWare got angry at the fans and claimed that the fans were trying to violate THEIR artistic integrity.

BioWare is the first company to actually find an antidote to, “Shut up and take my money.” You have to work HARD in order to do this. Now, why Mode 7 is launching itself into the middle of this crappy situation, I have no idea. So your entry into this situation is confusing.

Came here looking to buy this great game that I hear so many good things about and I stumble upon this blogpost and find out that you seem to share Biowares sentiment that fans/customers should basically “shut up and swallow” even if what is served is a sh*t-sandwich. Well congratulations, I won’t be buying your game after all!

I wouldn’t call the donations to charity, along with numerous well written articles, posts, and blogs a childish over reaction. In fact, I think ME fans handled themselves quite well throughout this whole fiasco. There will always be trolls out there that should not be grouped in with the everyone else.

I think it was a poor move for your company to take a shot at the folks that voiced their opinions constructively. Time will tell if that was a good business decision.

What a pretentious statement that you’re making about something you probably know little to nothing about. I’ve never heard of you before this but now I know to avoid you and tell my friends the same. There’s a reason you’re an indie studio without a large following and it probably stems partly from being rude and self-righteous.

If you want to produce art produce art and advertise it as art. I BUY games and I am a CONSUMER of a PRODUCT. They are not poems for me to ponder over unless that is what I was promised. If I was told I would receive something it is my right as a consumer to get what was advertised.

That said games can still be art and video games are still an art form, but the art is achieved in a dialogue between developer and player and the “artist” must still appease the customers by at the very least not lying to them.

If Michelangelo told the Pope he would paint the ceiling and painted it blood red with a five pointed star on it he wouldn’t have received complaints he would have been executed. Here consumers are angry that what they were told they were getting wasn’t what they expected in the same why the frieze Michelangelo painted was art but he still had to conform to expectations because he was being paid for it.

Sure is alot of samefaggotry in here. I bet its the same butthurt 10 year old posting multiple times, posing as multiple people. “waaaaah, a company has a different view than meee”. haha, sure been fun to read though.

You’re really smart. See a bunch of controversy, realize it’s a ticket for free advertising, and leap into it flailing and kicking at fans and customers alike to generate some interest in your Studio. Well, I hope you enjoy interest from the CoD crowd. <3

Cry some more Biodrones! Here’s to hoping you’ll realize your crappy shootan game IN SPACE owes you NOTHING whatsoever… or maybe not, Biodrones aren’t exactly the sharpest tools in the shed if you know what I mean. 😉

Just wish there were more developers like Mode7 who make actual good games!

Wow. I actually like Frozen Synapse. Shame the developers are a bunch of immature morons. Will make sure not to buy their games again, I really don’t fancy being insulted by the companies I support.

Sorry but Bioware’s confusing mess of the last five minutes of a fantastic trilogy genuinely needs a rewrite to even make sense to its biggest fans. As it stands, it feels like a big fat middle finger, telling me “nothing you did mattered, even though we sold this game to you by telling you your choices would matter in the end”.

Sorry game developers, but rewriting, retconning, or expanding upon previous work is nothing new in literature and other art forms, and if you want to be considered an art form too, you need to be ready to do that when your audience tells you that your artistic vision has lead you down the wrong path.

Another top tip… Remember that your art is going to be sold as a product, and don’t insult your own customer base. I mean, did you really think there would be no overlap between people utterly bemused by Bioware’s nonsense endings, and your customers? That’s pretty naïve. Bioware are actually trying to do the right thing and restore relations with their fans, because they understand how important they are to their future success. Too bad you’ve got your heads too far up your own backsides to realise the same.

I keep saying this but I think it’s worth saying it again: this isn’t a direct comment on anything to do with Mass Effect or anything that Mass Effect fans think or want. I wanted to see what changing the ending of a game *felt like* and I wanted to create a little joke for long-term FS players. This is a temporary change – it’ll revert very soon.

I think the idea of changing an ending is interesting, and the emotion that this engenders in people is fascinating from a writing perspective.

If you feel that I am insulting you, I would like to know more about that, because I’m not doing so intentionally. I think a lot of people here are angry because they think I’m trivialising this idea or trying to make fun of something they want. On the contrary, if you had actually engaged with what I was doing in anything other than a knee-jerk manner, you would know that I wanted to open up *more* of a debate about this issue.

We don’t want they, to give us “happy” ending, where pony’s would dance happy on green grass, under rainbow.
We want a NORMAL ending, because this one is totaly illogical – like it’s made by other team, which totaly don’t know what game is about.

Next – BioWare promised us that our decisions made ingame will have affect in many endings. The truth is that they broke that promise.
There’s no matter what we do through all 3 games (cure genophage or not; help quarians, or geths to win a war, or make them peace) were always going to same point, where we comeing to citadel, and making choice A, B, or C (what Casey Hudson promised that wouldn’t happened).

The funniest thing is that the ME3 is last of trilogy, but ME1 and ME2 have much more complicated endings (with much more variables) than the in last game…